Saturday, July 23, 2016

This is a great campaign commercial and it illustrates perfectly Donald Trump's personal weaknesses. I mean really... How smart can you be when you record on tape this kind of ammunition for your opponent to use?

Now back in 1998 our kids were watching when the Clintons made oral sex a matter for public discussion, but I'm not sure that's going to matter now.

For me, I'll just sit back and enjoy the irony of Hillary Clinton asking America to reject Trump on moral grounds.

It's kind of like Christians who pollute themselves and their families with network television and then claim that Donald Trump just isn't holy enough to be their nominee. But I guess there is a lot of hypocrisy out there.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Cops and the Black Man

From Robert VerBruggen in The National Review:

Let’s start with a fact everyone should be able to agree on: There
is a disparity. Blacks are about 13 percent of the American population,
yet according to data collected by the Washington Post in 2015 and 2016
thus far, they are about 27 percent of those killed by police. (For all
the numbers in this article, I exclude any cases for which the race is
“unknown.”)

But this isn’t the end of the discussion. Police are allowed,
indeed often expected, to kill in certain circumstances — namely, when
they reasonably think it is necessary to stop a threat to life or limb.
People who pose such a threat are not necessarily representative of the
entire population. So the question is, if not 13 percent, what baseline
should we be comparing that 27 percent against?

One possible comparison group is murderers: According to the FBI,
about half are black. Another is cop-killers, i.e., those who
demonstrably presented a lethal threat to police: Again according to the
FBI, about 43 percent are black. Still another is violent criminals in
general: Most of these commit relatively minor offenses (such as simple
assault, where there is no weapon or serious injury), but according to
victimization surveys, about 24 percent are black. In other words,
violent-crime rates roughly explain the gap — indeed, they over-explain
it in the case of murderers and cop-killers, who are far more likely to
be black than police-shooting victims are.....

Assuming that police are aware of these numbers and percentages, there would have to be a built-in prejudice against blacks solely based upon (a politically incorrect) reality. But that prejudice does not appear to be reflected in the police shooting data.

The peaceful black man's biggest problem is the violent black man's effect upon society's fears,apprehensions, and prejudices... Just as the peaceful Muslim's biggest problem is the Muslim extremist.